[mythtv-users] HD upgrade: new problems with playback

Willy Boyd willyboyd at gmail.com
Tue Feb 13 17:33:14 UTC 2007


I recently upgraded my combo backend/frontend to better support HD
playback.  This is what I'm running now:

ASUS M2NPV-VM w/ 6150, VGA out (1360x768 res)
Athlon X2 3800+ (AM2, 65w)
1gb DDR-800 ram
NVIDIA driver 9746

I also upgraded from FC4 -> FC5 -> FC6, and switched to myth SVN.  And
I switched from using SVIDEO from my spare cablebox, to the tuner
input of my PVR-250 (long story, don't have the right serial port
bracket for the ASUS board).  I'm afraid I changed too much at once
because now I'm having some playback problems.  On the SD recording
side, I think I can attribute most of it to the weak cable signal,
which I previously got around using the cable box.  Basically I get a
lot of "NVP: prebuffering pause" and "WriteAudio: buffer underrun"
messages in mythfrontend.  I've tried turning off all the playback
options I could find, i.e. deinterlace, with and w/o realtime prio,
extra audio buffering, and OpenGL sync.  That helped, but still after
a while the frontend can hang while watching LiveTV (with said error
messages in the log).

However the real kicker came when I tried to test HD playback.  I
don't have an HD tuner yet so for a test I downloaded "Elephant's
Dream" from orange.blender.org, both the 1080p version and the "1024"
version.  Both play pretty well with VLC and mplayer (1024 perfectly,
1080p with a few drops).  However, neither play at at with the
Internal player.  I get a black screen and a whole slew of "NVP: Timed
out waiting for free video buffers" and "NVP::AddAudioData():p1: Audio
buffer overflow, audio data lost!".  After a few seconds on the "1024"
video I get what looks like the video playing really fast, but only a
few frames per second, and really blocky like satellite on a stormy
day.  Both clips are MPEG4 with AC3 audio.

I've tried searching on the only results I've come up with relating to
these error message pertain to either weak signal (explains, maybe, my
recording/LiveTV issue), and something about NVIDIA overlay, but I
also turned off "Use XV picture controls" and other than that I don't
know what I'm supposed to do to help with that.  I also haven't
downloaded an HD MPEG2 clip yet but that's next on my list.  Has
anyone else seen these kinds of issues?  I know this is a semi-popular
hardware combination so there's got to be something I'm doing wrong.

Thanks!
- Willy


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